


Games.

by quicksparrows



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 01:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9267515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Jack hates what passes for professional in this new Overwatch.





	

.

 

Jack watches her from the top of the cockpit stairs, arms folded, a scowl fixed on his mouth. She's currently sitting in one of the booth seats, across from Lúcio –– another problem, as far as he's concerned, but that's a matter for another time. She's got her feet tucked up under her, and her tiny denim shorts reveal far too much leg to be a military professional. She's laughing, wildly, shoving Lúcio when he makes some joke, utterly at ease despite being on an Orca jet, en-route to a mission. An hour from now, she'll have to start suiting up. Like a kid picking up a controller.

He hates what passes for professional in this new Overwatch.

When Jack was nineteen, he was going through basic training. More than that, he was getting his balls busted by men thirty years his senior who had no qualms putting him nose-down in the dirt and teaching him that reverence to one's leaders come first, and he took it _seriously._ Those who don't learn wash out, or get nosed out. There's no place for irreverence in the military, and as far as he's concerned, that's a fact that transcends borders, languages and peoples. 

In the military, you would never rib your commanding officers without expecting the hammer to fall. That's just a fact.

When he sizes up Hana for the third time –– their third meeting _ever_ –– he comes to a conclusion that this girl isn't military, not by a long shot. Not by any standard he's aware of in his long decades, nor by any expectations he ever would have applied to his own teams. Overwatch had _qualifications_. It took the best of the best from all corners of the world, and its agents were almost alway well-seasoned, well-traveled, and above all experienced. All that at _nineteen_? Forget it. You had to be special to make Overwatch before twenty-five at earliest.

Is Hana _special?_

 

"Everything okay, Morrison?" Winston rumbles from behind him.

Jack tears his eyes off of the _children_ and looks back to Winston. 

"We shouldn't have brought her. She's just a kid."

Winston stands a little taller, high on his knuckles, his chest puffing up. Fighting words, perhaps.

"I wouldn't have accepted her if she was just a kid," Winston replies.

"You shouldn't have anyway. Kid or not, she doesn't pass muster."

"How do you know?" Winston replies. "It's her first mission with us, and she did extremely well in all the simulations and training we ran––"

"Simulations against Bastion units are what she's _good_ at," Jack snaps. "That's just a game to her. There are no _stakes._ She's never gone up against _people._ "

"She was trained by the Korean army. Unless you think their judgement is so unsound?"

"Their biggest concern is that she _looks_ good. She skipped months of basic training to film a movie, according to her file," Jack says. That's fact, that's firm, and there isn't any denying it. This, however, comes out harder: "If she spent half as much time in the field as she did posing for beer advertisements, maybe I'd give her a chance. But the fact is she's a poster girl, and I don't waste time on poster kids."

Overwatch never did well with poster girls or poster boys. That's how you get in trouble. That's how you let the fantasy run away with everyone's heads. That's how the world fucks you over, shoves you off the pedestal of its own making.

"Weren't you, once?" Winston says.

Jack stares down six hundred pounds of bulky, armored muscle and squares his shoulders, lifts his chin. His voice drops low, dangerous:

"Excuse me?" he says.

Jack feels a few sets of eyes turn to them –- Angela from across the cockpit, Ana from her seat at the Orca's helm. Pressure to cool it, no doubt, but he moves closer to Winston anyway.

"Let's get something straight, scientist," Jack says, sharper. "The last thing I ever want to do is lead Overwatch again. But if this is what you've got––" he gestures down the stairs again "––then maybe I don't have a choice, if it means having to sit back and watch you put kids on the front line."

"Jack," Ana says, warning. "Keep your voice down."

Winston moves so close that his massive head nearly butts against Jack's, but Jack stands immoveable. 

"We'll just have to see how she does, then," Winston says.

"See how I do at what?"

All of them turn. Hana is on her feet, standing at the foot of the stairs. She knows what, that's for certain.

"Do you think I'm going to get myself killed, Soldier: 76?"

Jack looks down at her with a heaviness in his heart; there's that, certainly. He's seen a lot of good people die over the decades, and some of them were innocents, dragged into situations they never asked for or deserved. But he doesn't put that to words –– that's not the issue here, not really.

Instead, he says: "You're going to get better soldiers killed, trying to save you when you get in over your head."

Hana rolls her lips between her teeth for a moment, tensely, uncomfortable. Everyone in the Orca is silent now, listening, watching.

"I don't have even a quarter of the experience you have, Seventy-Six," she says, finally. "Maybe not even a eighth."

"It's a _much_ lower fraction than that," he interjects. "Get back to math class."

A smirk flickers on her lips, but she doesn't take the bait for an obvious old-man joke. Good. At least she has some respect, bratty as she is.

"Even if it was only ten minutes experience," she says, "that doesn't mean I'm not serious. That I'm ready to give my life for this cause, if I need to."

"Haven't seen anything to prove that yet, kid," he says.

Hana nods and smiles then, determined. She tosses her glossy brown hair over her shoulder and puts her hands on her hips. _Drama queen._

"You better be ready to eat your words," she says.

Jack feels all eyes swivel to him. He could demand drills, a set of fifty push-ups, see those skinny gamer arms tremble until they give out. He could have her run laps, watch her pant and heave and long for her padded mech bed and swivel chairs. He could put her in a target range, prove to her that her aim is shit, _spray and pray_ , designed for video games and omnics and _not_ the real world, where people move unpredictably, outside of programmed paths. But no matter what, it wouldn't prove anything neither of them don't already know.

But they touch down in just over an hour. She'll just have to prove herself.

"You'd best be ready, then," he says.

She just nods.


End file.
